• Title/Summary/Keyword: research reactors

검색결과 730건 처리시간 0.062초

Production of uranium tetrafluoride from the effluent generated in the reconversion via ammonium uranyl carbonate

  • Neto, Joao Batista Silva;de Carvalho, Elita Fontenele Urano;Garcia, Rafael Henrique Lazzari;Saliba-Silva, Adonis Marcelo;Riella, Humberto Gracher;Durazzo, Michelangelo
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • 제49권8호
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    • pp.1711-1716
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    • 2017
  • Uranium tetrafluoride ($UF_4$) is the most used nuclear material for producing metallic uranium by reduction with Ca or Mg. Metallic uranium is a raw material for the manufacture of uranium silicide, $U_3Si_2$, which is the most suitable uranium compound for use as nuclear fuel for research reactors. By contrast, ammonium uranyl carbonate is a traditional uranium compound used for manufacturing uranium dioxide $UO_2$ fuel for nuclear power reactors or $U_3O_8-Al$ dispersion fuel for nuclear research reactors. This work describes a procedure for recovering uranium and ammonium fluoride ($NH_4F$) from a liquid residue generated during the production routine of ammonium uranyl carbonate, ending with $UF_4$ as a final product. The residue, consisting of a solution containing high concentrations of ammonium ($NH_4^+$), fluoride ($F^-$), and carbonate ($CO_3^{2-}$), has significant concentrations of uranium as $UO_2^{2+}$. From this residue, the proposed procedure consists of precipitating ammonium peroxide fluorouranate (APOFU) and $NH_4F$, while recovering the major part of uranium. Further, the remaining solution is concentrated by heating, and ammonium bifluoride ($NH_4HF_2$) is precipitated. As a final step, $NH_4HF_2$ is added to $UO_2$, inducing fluoridation and decomposition, resulting in $UF_4$ with adequate properties for metallic uranium manufacture.

ROLE OF PASSIVE SAFETY FEATURES IN PREVENTION AND MITIGATION OF SEVERE PLANT CONDITIONS IN INDIAN ADVANCED HEAVY WATER REACTOR

  • Jain, Vikas;Nayak, A.K.;Dhiman, M.;Kulkarni, P.P.;Vijayan, P.K.;Vaze, K.K.
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • 제45권5호
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    • pp.625-636
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    • 2013
  • Pressing demands of economic competitiveness, the need for large-scale deployment, minimizing the need of human intervention, and experience from the past events and incidents at operating reactors have guided the evolution and innovations in reactor technologies. Indian innovative reactor 'AHWR' is a pressure-tube type natural circulation based boiling water reactor that is designed to meet such requirements, which essentially reflect the needs of next generation reactors. The reactor employs various passive features to prevent and mitigate accidental conditions, like a slightly negative void reactivity coefficient, passive poison injection to scram the reactor in event of failure of the wired shutdown systems, a large elevated pool of water as a heat sink inside the containment, passive decay heat removal based on natural circulation and passive valves, passive ECC injection, etc. It is designed to meet the fundamental safety requirements of safe shutdown, safe decay heat removal and confinement of activity with no impact in public domain, and hence, no need for emergency planning under all conceivable scenarios. This paper examines the role of the various passive safety systems in prevention and mitigation of severe plant conditions that may arise in event of multiple failures. For the purpose of demonstration of the effectiveness of its passive features, postulated scenarios on the lines of three major severe accidents in the history of nuclear power reactors are considered, namely; the Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Severe plant conditions along the lines of these scenarios are postulated to the extent conceivable in the reactor under consideration and analyzed using best estimate system thermal-hydraulics code RELAP5/Mod3.2. It is found that the various passive systems incorporated enable the reactor to tolerate the postulated accident conditions without causing severe plant conditions and core degradation.

An investigation on the improvement of neutron radiography system of the Tehran research reactor by using MCNPX simulations

  • Amini, Moharram;Zamzamian, Seyed Mehrdad;Fadaei, Amir Hossein;Gharib, Morteza;Feghhi, Seyed Amir Hosein
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • 제53권10호
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    • pp.3413-3420
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    • 2021
  • Applying the available neutron flux for medical and industrial purposes is the most important application of research reactors. The neutron radiography system is used for non-destructive testing (NDT) of materials so that it is one of the main applications of nuclear research reactors. One of these research reactors is the 5 MW pool-type light water research reactor of Tehran (TRR). This work aims to investigate on materials and location of the beam tube (BT) of the TRR radiography system to improve the index parameters of BT. Our results showed that a through-type BT with 20 cm thick carbon neutron filter, 1.2 cm and 9.4 cm of the diameter of inlet (D1) and output (D2) BT, respectively gives thermal neutron flux almost 25.7, 5.6 and 1.1 times greater than the former design of the TRR (with D1 = 1.8 cm and D1 = 9.4 cm), previous design of the TRR with D1 = 3 cm and D1 = 9.4 cm, and another design with D1 = 5 cm and D1 = 9.4 cm, respectively. Therefore, the design proposed in this paper could be a better alternative to the current BT of the TRR.

Beryllium oxide utilized in nuclear reactors: Part I: Application history, thermal properties, mechanical properties, corrosion behavior and fabrication methods

  • Ming-dong Hou;Xiang-wen Zhou;Bing Liu
    • Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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    • 제54권12호
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    • pp.4393-4411
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    • 2022
  • In recent years, beryllium oxide has been widely utilized in multiple compact nuclear reactors as the neutron moderator, the neutron reflector or the matrix material with dispersed nuclear fuels due to its prominent properties. In the past 70 years, beryllium oxide has been studied extensively, but rarely been systematically organized. This article provides a systematic review of the application history, thermal properties, mechanical properties, corrosion behavior and fabrication methods of beryllium oxide. Data from previous literature are extracted and sorted out, and all of these original data are attached as the supplementary material, so that subsequent researchers can utilize this paper as a database for beryllium oxide research in reactor design or simulation analysis, etc. In addition, this review article also attempts to point out the insufficiency of research on beryllium oxide, and the possible key research areas about beryllium oxide in the future.